As
in many neighborhoods in the city, property values on the Upper West
Side are frequently tied to the success of the neighborhood’s schools.
So the mere mention of changing the zones of which blocks are assigned
to which schools is enough to send shock waves through the area. Both
P.S. 87 and P.S. 199, considered among the most desirable District 3
schools, are so desirable that children who live in their zones will
have to enter a lottery for next year’s kindergarten classes, and many
will be turned away. For families who moved between 72nd and 80th
Streets, [Noah Gotbaum, the chairman of the district’s Community
Education Council] said, students entering kindergarten have just a one
in three chance in getting a seat at P.S. 87, their zoned school.

At
P.S. 87 on West 78th Street, for example, kindergarten enrollment has
gone up by 60 percent over the past two years. The school has increased
its number of kindergarten classes to nine, putting the average size at
22 students, just above the citywide average of 21.7.

Gerald
Schoenfeld was born in New York City on Sept. 22, 1924. His father
manufactured long-haired fur coats. Mr. Schoenfeld attended local
schools — including P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where
he once won an oratory contest for reciting the Gettysburg Address...

As
11- and 12-year-olds, all of them had attended the same sixth-grade
class — what was known at the time as a class for “intelligently gifted
children” — at Public School 87 on West 78th Street, and most of them
had even been members of that same Brownie troop. Once they’d split
pineapple ice cream sodas at Schrafft’s and bugged each other’s older
brothers for baseball cards. But with the exception of a few pairs who’d
stayed in touch, none of the women had caught up since they graduated
from sixth grade in 1956.

One
day when I was about 11, walking back to Public School 87 in Manhattan
after our class visit to the Hayden Planetarium, I became overwhelmed by
a feeling I'd never had before. I was gripped by a hollow,
pit-in-the-stomach sense that my life might not matter. I'd learned that
our world is a rocky planet, orbiting one star among the 100 billion
others in our galaxy, which is but one of hundreds of billions of
galaxies scattered throughout the universe. Science had made me feel
small...

In
the early 1980's, P.S. 87, tucked behind the Museum of Natural History,
had only 350 students, and had been almost abandoned by neighborhood
families. Parents reclaimed the school through sweat equity, building a
school playground with their own hands, stocking supply cabinets and, in
recent years, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars a year through
the Parents Association. The school now has nearly 1,000 students and is
one of the most sought-after public schools in the city.

YOU'D
see them at the Decorate-Your-Own-Cupcake table at the street fair in
spring, and on the sideline of Safe Haven basketball games on wintry
Saturdays. They were fixtures on the list of class parents at Public
School 87 on West 78th Street, volunteering wherever parents were
needed. When Sondra Segal and Roberta Sklar signed up for cupcake table
duty, you knew they'd be there, dozens of cupcakes in hand -- living
proof that two moms can do twice as much as one.

Like
most children his age, Karl Greenfield looks forward to recess, when he
can go outdoors and play with his classmates. But after every
snowstorm, instead of throwing snowballs or making angels, he sits
indoors in an auditorium.
''You don't get to do anything,'' complained Karl, a bouncy
second-grader at Public School 87, near 78th Street and Amsterdam
Avenue.

For
nearly 20 years, P.S. 87 had been a vibrant, progressive school, an
Upper West Side jewel beloved by teachers, parents and children. But
last year, the atmosphere in the classrooms and hallways suddenly
changed.

Nearly
two years earlier, I had been a chaperone for a class at P.S. 87, a
melting-pot school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan much celebrated
for its diverse student population. But even at P.S. 87, this
third-grade class was a standout. The roster was a bouquet of fabulous
names: Daisuke, Naaborkai, Zoheret, Singha, Besfort, Hasan, Indigo
shared books and pencils and games with Julia, Allie, Brenna, Michael.
The newer arrivals among the families of these children came to this
country not by boat but by plane, part of a second great wave of
immigration after the United States ended the first one with quotas, and
then decades later loosened restrictions. But the immediacy of their
experience lent an unmatchable depth to the classroom.

For
Alex Kehr, 10, from P.S. 87 at 160 West 78th Street, who wrote ''The
Diseased Monkey,'' it was a particularly sweet triumph. He had given up,
deciding that writing was boring, but his mentors got him to stay with
it. Now, he said, ''almost the whole fourth grade knows about my play.''

It
was the first taste of a voyage to space for dozens of students at
Public School 87 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where two
fifth-grade classes and a first-grade class gathered in front of a
television to watch John Glenn blast into space for the second time.

Naomi
Hill was seduced by the suburbs. In 1991, after 11 years as principal
of Public School 87, which gained national prominence during her tenure,
she was dazzled at the discoveries just across the Hudson, in Tenafly,
N.J.

In
the vast New York City school system, Naomi Hill was a star, winning
constant praise for turning Public School 87 on Manhattan's Upper West
Side into a national model of diversity and academic innovation.

When
Donna Sands first sought her daughter Laura's admission to Public
School 87 on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Ms. Sands wrote two letters of
application. Then she got letters of recommendation from two college
professors, four parents of children at the school, the directors of two
pre-kindergartens that Laura had attended, Laura's teacher, Laura's
speech therapist and ''anybody I could think of who either knew me or
had met Laura.

IT
is 18 months since Lichtman's bakery closed, 20 since the projector
sputtered to a halt at the Thalia theater and nearly four years since
the New Yorker bookshop shut down - all victims of creeping development
and galloping rent rises.

With
their own labor, using donated materials, every species of West Sider
has converged on this New York corner to build a playground designed by
the 900 children of Public School 87, which adjoins the park.

One
sunny day in October 1975, my daughter Kate became thoughtful on the
way to school. "It the money strike is over," she asked earnestly as she
walked up the stairs to her kindergarten class at P.S. 87 in Manhattan,
"can I stay in this school all the way to fifth grade? I really love it
here."

The
children who first came to William Tecumseh Sherman Public School 87,
at West 78th Street just behind the Museum of Natural History, as
kindergartners in 1969, did not know what they were getting into...

Protesting
parents who were careful not to drop cigarette ashes on the floor or
cause much disturbance yesterday occupied offices at a public school on
the West Side in a vain effort to stop the Board of Education from
reducing the instructional time of pupils.

Spanish-speaking
and English-speaking mothers have been stitching together new
friendship along with the colorful handicrafts that they placed on sale
yesterday at the annual art show of Public School 87, at 160 West 78th
Street.

Plans
for two new public schools, one on the west side of Manhattan and the
other in Forest Hills, Queens, have been filed by the Board of Education
with the Department of Housing and Buildings.
According to the article, the current PS 87's construction budget was
estimated in 1952 at $1,660,000 in 1952 -- in 2007 dollars this would
equate to approximately $12,835,430.

Women
pushing baby carriages and leading older children by the hand were
among the applicants who appeared yesterday at 110 public schools
throughout the city to apply for renewals of basic A gasoline rations.
In many cases the women were applying on behalf of their husbands, who
were at work.

Starting
at page 10 in the book (23 of the PDF), there is a discussion of the
distribution of African American children in NYC Schools. While most
schools participated, the book notes that the principal of PS 87 (a
boys' school) did not cooperate with the investigation, even though PS
87 had a large number of black students enrolled. The book attempts to
chronicle the conditions and educational opportunities afforded to
African American children in New York City in 1915, first hand.
The book can be downloaded in its entirety in PDF format.